A big change

After 2 days of updating, and waiting for maintenance, I finally have a chance to log into FFXIV and play with new auto-attack battle system for a bit.

This patch 1.18 is by far possibly the most game changing patch so far. Some of the biggest change including:

1.Auto-attack, LOL
2.MP cost of curing spells increase.
3.Some abilities now needs MP to use.
4.Leve quest change, now players gain less SP after defeating the mob and gain bonus SP after leve completed.

I admit before I log in, I was worried after seeing the update notes and forum discussions.....auto-attack? That means the battle system in FFXI, which is slow and boring as fuck, is back? No more fast paced action RPG FFXIV? ;;

MP cost of curing spells increase, that means I will have harder time to solo 4 stars leve on my pugilist? ;;

Some abilities now needs MP to use, that means I can no longer spam light strikes and pummel like no tomorrow? ;;

Less SP gained after mobs die, and only award SP after leve complete? That means if I d/c during the quest I will lose a fuck tones of SP(I d/c a lot btw)? ;;

However, after I log on I can safely say all my worries are gone, this patch is by far, the best patch ever released, and makes FFXIV one step closer to an awesome MMORPG ^^;

After I log on, first thing I noticed is new music.....oh well, I care about the game balance more than music anyways(I still think music is important, just that FFXIV's music is pretty good and don't really need to improve). So I started a leve, and engaged and enemy....

OMG.

I never imagine I can play a SE MMORPG battle system works so well, that's all I can say.

New auto-attack battle system is more like WoW, but not FFXI(which just suck balls compare with WoW). Engage/disengage no longer has any delay, you can move while engage/disengage. You no longer have to spam basic attack move, but that doesn't make the battle slower than previous battle system, it's still pretty fast, and you'll be busy clicking the abilitie bottons. In old battle system every time when I engage/disengage/use abilities, or even spam basic attack move, I always feel like I'm stucked. Once someone mentioned old system allows player to time your attack like a fighting game, and avoid enemies WS to solo even tougher mobs. But it just makes the control very akward. Now with new battle system it's intuitive and easy to use, no longer feel akward, and still pretty fast paced. Now I feel FFXI is akward to play with ._.

SE also added the time bar for each JA recast, makes it even more WoW like. I guess they just all went to play WoW and decided they want to follow the path of other sucessful MMORPGs, LOL.

Now on to Cure spell MP cost increase.

Months ago I complained about how melee classes, in fact almost all classes, are cure spell highly dependant if you want to solo and no healer in pt. That makes Conjurer class abilities way more dominate compare with other classes, and that's just not fair.

Well, FFXI is kinda like that too, until DNC was introduced and every melee /DNC for solo. But its still kinda wrong to play a melee DD job, and most of the time I've been spamming Cure II on myself and rely on shock spikes to keep myself alive. I'm a fking h2h weapon user damn it, not a PLD or CON with h2h weapon or something. Now with such high MP cost of cure II is literally impossible to spam cure II like no tomorrow.

Of course I worried about whether I can solo higher difficulty leve or not without Cure II spam. So I started my first leve and selected 3 starts only. I ended up pwning through all the mob(whether that's because they adjusted leve difficulties or not is unknown), killing really fast because they're all very weak, and still gains decent amount of SP after leve completed as a reward.

This new leve adjustment allows me to solo weaker mobs and kill faster, and still gets SP reward in the end. That allows faster kill and less time spent to get each leve done. Since mobs are weaker, I no longer need to spam Cure II and able to straight DD all the way and kill as fast as possible.

To sum up:
Old FFXIV leve solo process:
Pick a difficulty level that's much higher lv than me so I don't get shitty SP after I kill the mob.
Buff myself with protect/SS/Shock spikes/eva+ JA/rampart JA
Engage a mob and try to save 3000 TP.
Turtle mode when I'm dying, cure II spam.
Find a chance to deal dmg during turtle mode.
Zerg the mob down when it almost died before it pwned me with it's TP move.
Rest a bit after fight to recover MP so I can turtle more.

New FFXIV leve solo process:
Pick a difficulty level that's same lv as me, since I can get SP after leve done anyways, so shitty SP after a mob is killed doesn't matter that much if I can kill fast and do as many leve as possible.
Buff myself with same spell/JA as above.
Engage a mob and try to save 3000 TP for zerging later.
No longer need to enter turtle mode, since mobs are much weaker, just straight DD.
No longer need to rest for MP after kill.

After this update I solo leve much faster, DD more, turtle less. I finally feel like I'm playing a melee class instead of mage class.

I feel the increased MP cost of cure spell is needed to adjust game balance, to make each job to be played as how it's supposed to.

After this patch I somehow feel SE really wanted to save this game. Although I still don think using WoW battle system makes this game not as unique, but if it's a battle system that works the best on the market, may as well just borrow it.

I haven't get a chance to try new instance yet. I hope I can try them soon.